Product management for customized machines. Development of sales tools for the optimization of the quotation preparation process of packaging machines and lines

Abstract

[EN] This master‘s thesis was conducted in the Business Unit Packaging of the company Harro Höfliger Verpackungsmaschinen GmbH and was aimed at developing sales tools for the optimization of the quotation preparation process of packaging machines and packaging lines. Missing quotation and calculation templates, long waiting times until receiving supplier quotations and high time exposures for formatting quotations are weaknesses that prolong the whole quotation preparation process unnecessarily. As consequence, the product and sales managers are working to full capacity and are prevented from focusing on more important tasks. In addition, there is a server impact on the customer relationship when providing erroneous or non-uniform quotations and an impact on the order acquisition because in some cases quotations couldn’t be provided in time and deals were lost. For this reason, the main objective of this master’s thesis is to simplify the quotation preparation and to reduce in this way the amount of work for the managers. With the help of new sales tools, the processing time of preparing a quotation can be reduced. The study is basically divided into two main parts. The first part is devoted to the theoretical framework of this thesis, dealing with the fundamentals of product management and sales process optimization. Modeled after the chosen optimization concept in theory, the succeeding applied part concentrates on the actual state recording and on the analysis of the sales process of the Business Unit Packaging, followed by the definition of a target state. In order to reach this target state, measures in form of new sales tools are elaborated and implemented. The results of this master’s thesis are several new and existing sales tools that have been elaborated or optimized, for example quotation and calculation templates, text blocks and a new filing system for all quotation bases. Additional recommendations for action round off the final solution and give guidance on how to proceed in future. On the basis of the results of this thesis, it can be concluded that Harro Höfliger has to adapt the whole sales process of the company continuously to changing trends in order to stay competitive and to secure a long-term success as well as the company’s future existence on the world market.

[ES] El objetivo del TFM es la optimización de procesos de distribución en la empresa Harro Höfliger (Alemania), empresa dedicada a las soluciones tecnológicas innovadoras para empresas farmacéuticas.